Brown University shooting suspect allegedly referred to classmate as ‘slave’
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND: A friend of the gunman involved in the tragic Brown University shooting has shared that he often bullied classmates. At times, he referred to a Brazilian student as his ‘slave.’
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student from Portugal, was found dead on Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a six-day manhunt.
Investigators think he shot and killed two students and injured nine others at Brown. Two days later, he killed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Nuno FG Loureiro.
Shooter's 'only close friend' reveals details
On Friday, Scott Watson, who described himself as the shooter's 'only close friend,' told The New York Times that while Valente could be 'kind and gentle,' he also had a darker side.
"I had to break up a fight once," Watson told the outlet. “Claudio would insult and call him his slave,” continued Watson.
Watson said that the classmate was Brazilian. Valente is from Portugal, which is the South American nation’s one-time colonizer.
He described his former friend as 'brilliantly smart,' yet also a bully who called other students 'slaves' and who was frequently unhappy and sometimes angry.
Watson, who is now a physics professor at Syracuse and a former classmate of Valente in Brown’s physics PhD program, said Valente often complained that the coursework was too easy and that the campus food was poor.
The discovery happened at the same time as the finding of a hidden internet post that Valente reportedly wrote on a Brown physics message board after he dropped out in May 2001, according to the NYT.
It seems to show Valente stating that he was back in Portugal and providing an email for classmates to contact him.
It also included a message written in Portuguese that, when translated, read, "The greatest liar is the one who is able to lie to themselves. These exist everywhere, but they sometimes proliferate in the most unexpected places."
Classmate talks about shooter, calls his attitude 'unpleasant'
A former classmate of Valente at Portugal’s Instituto Superior Técnico, where the murdered MIT professor also studied with him, shared on Facebook that Valente was confident and thought he was smarter than his peers.
“In class, he had a great need to stand out and show that he was better than the rest,” Moura wrote.
“At first he liked to teach good students, but Claudio’s attitude was unpleasant, often engaging in quizzes with colleagues he didn’t consider as brilliant as him... They were totally unnecessary quirks, which did not help the class at all.”
Watson said he also tried to convince the “socially awkward” Valente to stay and finish the program at Brown, but he refused.
